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I think one imporntant step needs to be a change in verbiage. With the obvious exceptions for dementia and acute psychosis/delirium if you are a patient and you assault or batter anyone, healthcare provider, administrator, visitor, or security, you immediately cease being a patient. As such you no longer get any of the protection or “rights” afforded to a patient. The police need to be contacted, the subject now must be ejected from the facility regardless of their medical condition, and hopefully the person goes to jail if appropriate. Multiple times as a charge RN in the ED I had to tell a family member or patient that yes it is okay to disagree and express their frustration about whatever was making them unhappy about their care in the ER, that I was very much open to having a conversation on how we could address and solve the conflict, but that if we were not going to have the conversation in a respectful fashion then I was done. Additionally they were told that if the behavior persisted that they would be ejected from the facility. Some people would calm down when you acknowledged their frustrations and just asked for a reasonable conversation. Others needed to be thrown out. I don’t care if you’re having a STEMI, hit a nurse and you’re gone.

Lisa Menzie

When we had 2 bank robbers run through the ED and wind up in the bowels of the hospital before being stopped, there was a ‘brief’ discussion afterwards about metal detectors. Know what shut that down? “Our patient satisfaction scores would suffer”. They never did ANYTHING.